280-something

I think, I didn't notice really.

@PhiNotPi Here's the requested bot. It waits til there's 1 second left then clicks the option with the most votes. Defaults to Ask in a tie.

@Air 269 days I believe

Oh, OK.

I'm out, I've wasted entirely too much time on that.

@Calvin'sHobbies When the game is about to be restarted, what does it vote for?

Restart, whoops. Though hang on, it stopped clicking for me

d'oh, our best time to completion got beaten by at least one other site

Why does the site keep restarting when it seems that continue has the most votes?

Cross Validated is on the leaderboard with only 1 win and an average of 252 days

I think the restart bots have gotten sneaky and pour their votes in at the very end

At the very end: I can't even see their votes register on the screen before it's restarted.

There's at least 4 bots running.

I think codegolf.SE is busted.

One restart vote can't be enough to call for a restart, can it?

It's that there are 5 or so restart votes, but the bots vote with 0.01 seconds left so you don't even notice them voting at all.

Wait a second. That was 60/40 answer, and it picked ask.

You can tell how many people actually voted last round by looking at the number of people needed this round and multiplying by 2.

Interesting.

So there was a last-minute vote that made it 50/50.

Well you seem to have gotten out of the restart rut so I'm going to bow out again.

I saw 5 votes one round, but then the next round needed 3 voters, so I know that there was actually a total of either 6 or 7 people who voted that last round.

proof

wait a seond

I'm an idiot

ignore what I said earlier about our best time being beaten

thanks for that star, strangers

I'd recommend that we not run bots

I'd be happy to come in second place, but first in terms of human-powered wins

Having spent some of my youth in MMORPGs suffering from that very debate, I'm not sure either side wins

This game dies in a day no matter what. MMORPGs die because of bots.

Let the people who want to bot do so. Don't do it if you don't like it.

MMORPGs die because their designers fail to innovate in ways that make bots irrelevent.

That, or they suck.

I dunno.

I quit gaming like two years ago.

Don't take the win away from the winner if they win because of bots. If we lose then we lose.

It's impressive that they got a better bot than we did in less than a day.

They are an anime club for crying out loud. And we're a programming club.

We shoulda had the shortest bot on the network built ages ago.

You forgot to inherit your bot from Saiyans, that's all.

Bedtime for me. I expect at least 13 Internets when I wake up!

I could've built a bot by win 2 or 3, but I didn't think that would be fair

256 solo, just me and my beer. This is why I quit gaming. Good night folks.

who starred that

@PhiNotPi Ignore my last bot. I updated it and it still doesn't always work. Not sure why.

wow, we are still ahead !

bravo guys

not for long

anime will overtake us through the night

with their vote bots and dodging of griefing bots

is there a bug ?

there were 2 votes on ask adn 1 on restart, still it went for restart

doubt it, why do you sya that

starred 38m ago

whatever we do, its going for restart

no, there were still 1 restart vote

looks like it just worked to me

are we perfectly sure that the bots are from anime ?

no

I'm only skeptical because, not only do they have constructive voting bots, but they seem unscathed by griefing bots

we were all so much furious about how we made this game not so fun yesterday

and now that people have created bots for it, that's fun ?

I don't think bots are fun, and I've tried to convince them not to use them

so they are agreeing that they use it ?

I just get ganged up on and mocked, though

so I gave up

nope

well, voting bots, yes

griefing bots, no

are you with me then ?

I don't know what your stance is

check yourself

before I wreck myself?

their progress is so bad

are you looking at their site ?

their progress is fine

they'll finish around their usual 280 days

There's a bot always voting Restart on the current pcg egg :/

yes

Hi you must be new

so @Runer112 do you have a link where they agreed that they use bots ?

just check the history

there are dozens

they don't try to hide it at all, they're proud of it

history here or maid cafe ?

maid cafe

just search for bot or script or something

Looks like downvote-griefing is the new fad

they switch it up

@Riking There used to be one of those on C.SE. No one else was playing though, so it restarted the game dozens of times for no real reason... :P

good luck with that Optimizer

I think people just decided that anything that results in PPCG not winning is fair game now

you already got voted down, so I voted you back up to neutral

but expect it to go negative

it will

and i will comment the same thing u just said

you should remove the reference to "we"

that reference might instantly command a bunch of downvotes

because people love to hate PPCG now

done

although i am already famous

the question has couple of links

which mostly show my transcripts

wow , vote meter is fluctuating

well, if by some miracle they get stopped soon, we'll actually still be in first

but don't count on it

pretty sure some mod said earlier that we basically deserve any unfairness that happens towards us

link to that >?

the second half of that is definitely not true, but whatever

that's not a link from mod's

i want to post it in the answer so i want a direct link

I don't know which mod he's paraphrasing here

Honestly, who cares who wins... This site pwned it before people started getting bitter and using bots.

I'm not sure where the original quote came from

With a little tweaking it'd be a neat basis for a permanent game somewhere no doubt.

The thing is that we stopped, in a very short amount of time.

if everyone else shows such negative attitude and plays by "unfair" means, then I dont see a reason why we should stop

And the others keep going. And feel justified, because tu quoque. I know.

I'm well aware of the fact that we stopped as soon as we were made aware it wasn't an intended play style

the rest of stack exchange has chosen us as the scapegoat, though

pretty sure bots are also not an intended play style

Yeah.

so we're stuck with it

I don't believe in getting bullied

I fight

I tried too

we are two now

Dibs on the code-golf question to simulate StackEgg

1 + 1 = 11

then I lost my will to fight after being rejected for so long

hmm, we need at least 7 users ..

just a friendly tip: don't even try to communicate with maid cafe about it

they're completely unreceptive to the idea that they're doing anything wrong

I think people are not getting the hint i am giving here ... :(

I'm not going to restart them

due to the initial raiding stuff, we're not on much of a moral high ground, but I'd like to stay higher than anime

:/

so maid- cafe just one-boxed my answer

brace yourselves, down votes are coming

indeed

don't vote to restart anime, please

Anime just got #10

I'd go do something unbecoming, but that would involve making an account I don't need ^_^

so much hate you are showering

:P

every site is performing "vote fraud"

Saw it just now. Amusing how things are taking a shift.

and we didn't admit to cheating at all

"we"

as soon as what we were doing was brought up as cheating, we stopped

No banding, huh?

fine, I

Your voting patterns reminds me of how I post cv-plz's in the Tavern.

> On a more serious note: coordinated voting in chat treads very close to voting fraud in my book.

I don't know about other people in here, but I don't think others thought we were cheating either

I don't see how that's relevant...

@Runer112 [citation-needed]

Now they need to implement resetting SE communities, and I will spam reset-plz requests.

It also assumes people aren't assessing bad questions/answers on their merits.

are you accusing our members of knowingly cheating

Cheating, no, griefing, yes. Absolutely. Textbook.

/end hate

Why are we at each other's throats all of a sudden, guys? It's a freaking April Fool's Day joke...

I'm not at his throat, I'm defending mine

Potato potahto, still nonsense. Be civil.

I spent a good 1/2 hour soloing this morning only to have someone reset vote until they won two votes in a row randomly. Pissed me off. Then I realized this was really a stupid thing to get pissed off about.

> Tomorrow (or a bit later in your timezone), the game will be gone from the site. So it really is ungracious to ruin the fun of others for your own personal amusement.

@BrainSteel gamification!

also, who's to say that anime boosting their ranking doesn't ruin my fun

If it was a thing worth getting pissed off about they would have spent more time designing it.

I say it absolutely makes the game not fun knowing our site will be ranked against robots

Its still tuesday over here.

I thought we had generally accepted that the introduction of bots ruined all fun, except for the joy of programming the bots themselves?

Still Tuesday in KS.

and SK

^_^

anime hasn't accepted that

California too, if I'm not mistaken.

@Runer112 That's what animes are about, much like how arqade prefers pvping. :p

they're proudly contining to use bots

45% restart

Anime is about cartoon robots.

and we were about finding loopholes

but as soon as that put a damper on other people's fun, we stopped

I may be cartoon if pixelart cartoon exists

It's nonsense. Though, as a programming forum, it's a little embarrassing that we haven't put something together better than the anime forum...

"16 users"

uhhh

Because we don't want to ruin the "fun"

anime is putting a real damper on the fun of any site trying to seriously compete

@Runer112 No they are not.

@Runer112 Oh?

What they are doing does not affect other sites.

"seriously compete" does not apply here. It is April 1st.

it affects the leaderboard

the leaderboard affects me

So?

For six hours we were playing manually.

But it does not directly impact any other site.

@Runer112 And who's problem is that?

Spamming restart does.

That is the difference.

Right.

^

that makes it not fun for me

for one

So?

but feel free to tample all over my having fun

Well

I'm just one guy

Exactly.

Brighten up and have fun, not try to win with foul play.

I don't agree that running bots to win is any less of a valid fun ruining than winning by raiding is.

I'm done here.

At least the raiders are doing something social.

Oh?

Which should be the purpose of stupid little games like this.

The raiders literally drove communities like Arqade away from it because it was not worth it.

Whether or not raiding is good is dependent on the genre you attach to it. Bots, on the other hand, make the game boring

Seriously

It got people talking.

Bots make it pointless.

Raiding gets more people talking.

It's goddamn April fools. It is supposed to be pointless.

If it was supposed to be pointless they wouldn't have done it.

...

It's supposed to generate buzz about the site. That's all.

I think it was poorly executed on SE's behalf.

I think Gmail being released on April 1 was perfectly executed on Google's behalf.

I really enjoyed Gmail Blue

probably my favorite april fools

unicoins were great

guys

if raiding wasn't allowed, then why'd they make the restart button

it's clearly part of the game

@orlp to restart

But... if you screw up the game so badly you need to restart, doesn't it automatically restart?

guys

if botting wasn't allowed, then why do programming languages exist

Maybe you're a perfectionist and think you ought to restart at 400 days because it'll affect your average.

it's clearly part of the game :p

Let's vote brigade and always vote 'upvote' to prove a point.</sarc>

There's a large difference between griefing (yes I maintain griefing) and scripting. Griefing is the act of deliberately irritating or harassing other players using parts of the game in unintended ways (yes I maintain unintended because devs have literally said so). Scripting is a bit of a moral grey area, and depends on level of competition. However, leaderboards aside, directly impacting others' games is much more directly frustrating to other players. This message is now too long, so I'm out.

@Runer112 the existence of something does not prove a useful application

in case it wasn't obvious, I was being facetious

hence the need for a sarcmark

So basically SE needs to be divided into PvP and non-PvP communities so we can all have fun.

yes.

thats genius

Let's put this in a Twitch Plays Pokemon analogy (pretend it's a race or something between two channels, I dunno). Spamming restart is the literal equivalent of spamming start9. Technically, you'd win a race by forcing the other to continuously pause the game, but it becomes frustrating to the point of insanity for the other group.

Dammit @Unionhawk you said you were out

@Unionhawk put it in the perspective of clash of clans

and botting is like TASing :p

you'll find that "raiding" is perfectly accepted

also not very fun for the other groups

Let's put this in a WoW analogy. Spamming restart is the literal equivalent of attacking a lvl 30 character with your lvl 100 toon repeatedly. Not very much fun for the person, not particularily encouraged either, but it does tend to trigger fun PvP turf wars.

But you also have a choice to be on a server where that doesn't happen.

@KevinStricker except that sites are on the same level

Not really.

while we initially had more people, I don't think we do anymore

and the game is still going on

I've played on a server where the horde constantly gets facerolled for 10 years.

It causes people to quit servers and make the balance worse.

I said "sites", referring to code golf sites

Well, while you guys continue to bring up cases of textbook griefing, and call it not that, I'm going to be leaving now.

And yet... :D

I didn't say it wasn't griefing.

...

@Unionhawk what is the difference between griefing and standard PvP?

I'm arguing that just because something is griefing doesn't mean it isn't part of a game.

I'm arguing that griefing should not be a part of a game.

Period.

@Unihedro happy chat banning me ?

Optimizer, you fell for their trap

talking to them is hopeless

Meh.

@Runer112 hey, i was getting ready for office anyways :)

is meta.stackexchange part of stackoverflow, or their own competing site?

Why are we trying to make a point about griefing by flagging inoffensive chat messages?

nevermind, googling it

I'm literally invalidating flags here

Don't make assumptions

as you can see Optimizer, even with that image thing, they just refuse to recognize any rules or wrongdoing

Okay, I was throwing that at the room, but implying it was you, not really fair.

Someone is trying to grief someone here though.

guys, what purpose does restart have if not for raiding?

restarting a screwed up run

It's on the star wall.

What purpose does flagging have if not for banning people we don't like for being here.

speaking of which, the off-hours crew here is kind of tanking our completion time average :p

lol

@Runer112 how can a run be screwed up?

I don't know, can you think of a way to screw up a run?

miserably low stats, taking way too long, etc

yeah, this one is over 300

you guys better start using good strats soon :p

OTOH theoretically you don't want to restart this one even.

nope

I don't understand 'taking way too long'

Because the leaderboard is ordered by completions, so restarting this screwed up one would still be a setback.

restart button as no use what so ever

apart from "cheating"

ANY PROGRESS AT ALL means that restarting will ALWAYS take longer

the restart button has a second purpose: to make others worry

and the average time completion is only for a tiebreaker

so you should only aim for getting the most wins

never give up getting more wins for lower win times

this is true

but I expect the next run to be substantially quicker :p

y ?

did we get a better strat than top bottom with quality first ?

yes

we realized that voting something up will negate any decay that would've occurred that day

so the new strats mainly resolve around trying to maximize decay negations

so vote up when all full ?

umm

it doesn't matter so much what you do when everything's full

but don't vote quality when it's full, that seems to be bad

but the general idea is, instead of trying to max one stat, then the next, etc

try to upvote something that's likely to decay if you don't

and still try to abuse the alert system

you can actually let a stat sit in alert for 4 days

which is basically 4 days of free no decays

(for that stat)

ok, switching topics

you are given an array of integers

Reset the array.

each value in this array is a random positive number from, say, 1 to 20

now, each turn you can reduce a number in the array by X and reduce its neighbors by Y (where Y<X)

minimize the number of turns taken to reduce all numbers in the array to 0 or less

Set X=21, Y=20 and nuke it. Is that cheating?

yeah, you are given X and Y

(I think I'm funny.)

(But I'm not.)

I've made some changes to @Calvin'sHobbies bot, it's not optimal but it tries to maximize questions and answers, then quality then users. pastebin.com/Zr8H02u0

pastebin.com/Zr8H02u0

Well, it seems it has some problems, since it just voted to Ask when it should have really not... will work on it more

Wow, wtf... it looks like I picked the best possible day to take a break from PPCG.

All right, this one pastebin.com/is78GM8F now tries to emulate what seems to be the predominant strategy: max questions and answers and then get quality up while maintaining users

Hi Martin

hi

You haven't been around since yesterday?

nope. I checked chat once (on mobile) early during the day, saw that some April's Fools stuff was going on, but didn't bother about it and went offline again.

also, in some fit of madness I decided to start playing Fallen London yesterday... god, this will be eating my time...

Well then you've missed quite a lot

I'm glad I did (I read the transcript)

Hiya @MartinBüttner

Let me precede by thanking everyone from Arqade and PPCG for putting together the metagames which attracted attention to other sites and set up some spectacular drama that made everybody's time worthwhile.

@MartinBüttner Yes indeed...

Here's a great summary of what happened.

errr, wrong link

I read his "premortem"